Suggestion Solutions to the Unoptimized RTV System and Poorly Balanced Maps

Good evening, I've played the PF Zombie Mod server for a few years now (aside from my two year hiatus) and have come not with issues, but solutions.

The server requires that a minimum of 50% of players vote 'rtv' if they wish to change maps early. This is appropriate.
The issue, however; is that the balance of the vote is thrown-off by spectators also on the server.

To fix this, the vote system would only account for active players (survivors and zombies) instead of accounting spectators too.
Many maps that get chosen are too survivor-sided, causing both survivors and zombies to lose interest and leave the server because both the map they're playing and the 'rtv' vote system are unbalanced.

A map with 75%+ win-rate for either survivors/zombies should be fixed or removed. By doing so; we can increase the number of quality maps in our rotation and make the players happier with what they have to choose from.
Hopefully in the future we can continually move the percentage to a lower number. 48.5% - 52.5% being the most optimal.

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Fix List

Remove List

I do not care for editing other people's work, but if a map has a strong art or gameplay direction; I will investigate its repair.
Above all I believe that these fixes are realistic, and that they will directly benefit the server and therefore the community.

I'm still for this idea, but we need a talented sourcepawn coder to make it happen.

As for your maps theory, are we sure the issue lies with the maps and not the server settings? Perhaps the balance of zombie vs human could be improved. Looking at the map stats on http://stats.plaguefest.com/maps/css2, it seems the majority of maps on rotation are human-sided. Either that's true, or our server settings are human-sided, or both. I don't believe I play enough to give an accurate opinion on this, but maybe some regulars can share their thoughts.

I have concluded that the gamemode settings for the zombies are not the issue pertaining to human-sided maps, but instead the prop type/placement and map layout/flow are the culprits of these map's poor balance

Now that I know that the rtv system issue has been known for 4 years, yet has remained unchanged; is concerning. Has the game administrator considered assistance from a sourcemod developer?

Looking at some of the CT sided maps I wouldn't really jump to calling them CT sided. My definition of a CT sided map would be when more CT's win than zombies or close to it. Most of the time it comes down to 1 to 4 CT's squeaking by. Many of the maps you listed usually boil down to just one particular spot on the map being relatively overpowered. A few I can name off the bat are abandoned mall being the small room that can be equipped with two vending machines, firewall with the tower that can be caded with a single long bookcase, london with the secret staircase room that can be blocked with a soda machine, and hotline miami with the little room that can be accessed via its balcony. Many people who have been here awhile will agree that there are spots that are way to over powered and should be more accessible. I'm no tech master so I can't really offer a groundbreaking solution other than pay Bill to play more and even out the win percentage.

Most of the time it comes down to 1 to 4 CT's squeaking by. Many of the maps you listed usually boil down to just one particular spot on the map being relatively overpowered. A few I can name off the bat are abandoned mall being the small room that can be equipped with two vending machines, firewall with the tower that can be caded with a single long bookcase, london with the secret staircase room that can be blocked with a soda machine, and hotline miami with the little room that can be accessed via its balcony..

Great, if this is the case for a lot of maps; the edits won't have to be too invasive or complex.
It'd be great if we could document overpowered spots per map that have a survivor win-rate of 75%+.
However, maps in the upper 80%+ most likely would require too much work to fix, cleanly.

Great, if this is the case for a lot of maps; the edits won't have to be too invasive or complex.
It'd be great if we could document overpowered spots per map that have a survivor win-rate of 75%+.
However, maps in the upper 80%+ most likely would require too much work to fix, cleanly.

please for the love of satan do not decompile a map and edit it. shit always breaks. some things can be easily fixed, other things not so much. try to can get the VMF from the original mapper. also what lucid said is very true. those stats aren't as accurate as you are assuming they are.

Win/lose ratio is a terribad metric to judge map quality. The average zombie is horrible at this game. Yeah, some maps have OP spots. But more often than not, it's not that spots are OP, it's that zombies are just awful at being zombies.

You say that removing certain maps increases the rate of "quality maps" in rotation. This isn't true. Many of the maps are (IMO) mediocre. Removing popular maps simply means that the less popular, but mediocre maps will be played more often. Removing popular maps doesn't increase the level of quality of the less popular mediocre maps. It simply means we'll play the mediocre maps more often. If you want to increase the quality of the map rotation, you'd need to introduce new maps.

Win/lose ratio is a terribad metric to judge map quality. The average zombie is horrible at this game. Yeah, some maps have OP spots. But more often than not, it's not that spots are OP, it's that zombies are just awful at being zombies.

I also agree. Most of the time you will find that more inexperienced players are zombies than survivors. But given that some of the maps I posted in the OP have hundreds of hours of up-time; yet still have a poor survivor/zombie win balance, means we should take action on fixing or removing them.

The first step to our map problem is to identify the overpowered spots in them. Once we have good documentation on their strengths/weaknesses; we can seek permission from the original maker (if applicable, because I do not like editing maps in the first place, but never without the original creators permission.) If given the go-ahead; myself or other mapping volunteers can get to work on their repair.

It'd be nice if we could get more management insight on this discussion. If they have anything to share.

Wait ? Do you guys make your own plugins ? No alliedmodders ? Because there are some good rtv plugins in there.

Just about every plugin on the servers was either coded by Kyle, or modified by Kyle, including sourcemod's core plugins. I searched AM for an rtv plugin that fit the bill a few years ago, as well as a couple days ago when this thread first appeared but came up short both times. Either I simply can't find it, or it doesn't exist yet.

I'm still for this idea, but we need a talented sourcepawn coder to make it happen.

As for your maps theory, are we sure the issue lies with the maps and not the server settings? Perhaps the balance of zombie vs human could be improved. Looking at the map stats on http://stats.plaguefest.com/maps/css2, it seems the majority of maps on rotation are human-sided. Either that's true, or our server settings are human-sided, or both. I don't believe I play enough to give an accurate opinion on this, but maybe some regulars can share their thoughts.

You're in the "rockthedamnvote" conversation. The stall is there. If we can't go with afkman plugin and want this now we might as well just exclude spectators instead of excluding afks only.

Appreciate the attempt to help, but that edit requires multiple unnecessary plugins (ultimate map chooser and its rockthevote module), and Deto already knows how to ignore specs with our setup. Ignoring all specs isn't the current goal though, instead we're aiming to only ignore spectators that are deemed AFK by our 'AFK manager' plugin. Deto's already made some good progress on it, but there's still a kink or two that need to be worked out.